About NGI Zero

Logo NGI Zero: letterlogo shaped like a tag

Paving the way to the Next Generation Internet

The internet has grown very important to our societies, but there is much to be improved — and in many places we need fundamentally better technologies to protect our security, our privacy and our way of life. NGI Zero is a joint not-for-profit effort by thirteen organisations to support the development of technology commons as building blocks for the Next Generation Internet initiative. NGI Zero is led by NLnet foundation, a public benefit organisation established by pioneers of the European internet to support the development of an open information society.

NGI Zero supports strategic technology R&D, more in particular the development of free/libre/open source software and hardware, and the establishment of open standards and open data - technologies that can be used, studied, modified and shared by anyone for any purpose, without having to ask anyone for permission. Through these two programmes a total of 11.2 million euro is being granted to hundreds of independent researchers and open source developers working on a better internet.

The current two programmes run by NGI Zero are:

NGI0 PET
Privacy and Trust Enhancing Technologies
Check out the overview of ongoing projects.
Download discover free, reliable software such as Cryptpad, Sylk, WireGuard and EteSync.
NGI0 Discovery
Search, discovery and discoverability
Check out the overview of ongoing projects.
Learn about free, interesting new tools such as Searx, Indigenous, Pixelfed and Open Food Facts.

Both NGI Zero PET and NGI Zero Discovery are no longer accepting new applications. Check out NGI Assure instead, and know that we are busy finding the money to continue these awesome programmes.

NGI Zero is part of a key new initiative by the European Commission centered around establishing a Next Generation Internet. This "internet of the future" should be able to address the many security, privacy and operational issues of todays internet. If we have the freedom to re-imagine and re-engineer the internet, how can we make a future version of it be more inclusive and bring out the best in all of us?

Note that if you are interested in NGI Zero, you also might be interested in NGI Assure. NGI Assure is a new programme that aims to make the internet more reliable and trustworthy through open source building blocks that provide strong assurances. If your idea needs funding, why not apply today?

More about NGI Assure

Who is behind NGI Zero?

NGI0 consists of a world class coalition of not-for-profit organizations that will support the researchers and developers with their expertise on security and code quality, accessibility (making technology available to everyone, including people with disabilities), localisation/internationalisation (to increase language diversity on the internet), packaging and reproducible builds, documentation, responsible disclosure, diversity, community building and more.

The following organisations together constitute NGI Zero:

Accessibility Foundation - Center of expertise on accessibility of internet and other digital media for all people, including the elderly and people with disabilities
HAN University of Applied Sciences dept. of Inclusive Digital Design & Engineering - Research into inclusive design of technology
Association for Progressive Communications - A global network and organisation that strives towards easy and affordable access to a free and open internet to improve the lives of people and create a more just world
Center for the Cultivation of Technology - A charitable non-profit host organization for international Free Software projects
Commons Caretakers - A not-for-profit service provider for the development of Commons
Network Security Group of Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich - Academic research institute focused on building secure and robust network systems
Free Software Foundation Europe - Association charity that aims to empower users to control technology.
ifrOSS - Provides not-for-profit legal services and studies in the context of free and open source software
NixOS Foundation - Foundation supporting development and use of purely functional configuration management tools, in particular NixOS and related projects
NLnet Foundation (NL) - Grantmaking public benefit organisation founded by pioneers of the early European internet
Petites Singularités - Non profit organisation working with free sofware and focusing on collective practices
Radically Open Security - Not-for-profit open source security company
TIMIT - Experts in secure software
Translate House - Develops and implements open source localization solutions

Free resources from NGI Zero

Best practices for secure, accessible, localized, inclusive technology

While the focus of NGI Zero is on producing relevant technological building blocks, we are happy to share the things we learned too. The lessons learned and best practices developed by NGI Zero are publicly available for everyone to learn from and build on. Below you can find the currently available documentation. We will keep this this page up to date when new content becomes available, so you why not bookmark this page:

FSFE with the help of ifrOSS have prepared the following best practices and tutorials on software licensing, complicance, trademarks:

Acknowledgements

NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology. NGI Zero receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements No 825310 and 825322.